Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Merse Pál Szeredi: Kassákism - MA in Vienna (1920-1925)

derneath which works by representatives of the “new art" were reproduced. All this suited MA's new programme and its concept of international openness. With its exciting spirit, MA came to be regarded as an increasingly prestigious paper even by Western and East-Central European artists. On a number of occasions, leading avant-garde figures, such as Raoul Hausmann, Hans Richter, El Lissitzky or Theo van Doesburg, published their texts, manifestos and artworks first in Kassák’s journal. And alongside these appeared Kassák’s constructivist compositions on the front cover of many issues.

From 1921, Kassák wanted to be a formative figure in the international avant-garde network, and to stand out primarily by means of his radicalism in the competition between publications. In a letter to Tzara, he came forward with a plan for an international journal that would publish only the “most extreme" tendencies among German, Hungarian, Italian and Russian art.18 This concept was also reflected among the pages of MA: the issues published between 1921 and 1925 represented a collage of the entire spectrum of the international avant-garde. [Figs. 8-15]

TATLINISM OR MACHINE-ART

For Kassák and MA’s international networks, perhaps the most problematic element between in 1921 and 1922 was the new Russian art. Prior to 1920, hardly any information on the avant-garde art of revolutionary Russia had reached Europe. News of Suprematism, founded by Kazimir Malevich to surpass the form experiments of Futurism and Cubism, or the process by which Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and colleagues placed a geometric abstract language in the service of the socialist revolution, had not reached Kassák at all, despite the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s contacts with Russia. Thefirst information was brought by theyoung art historian Konstantin Umansky, who arrived in Germany in 1920. Umansky first publicised these new phenomena in his articles and highly successful book on the development of modern Russian art during the First World War.19 His account, published as Der Tat- Unismus oder die Machinenkunst [Tatlinism or Machine-Art], also inspired the Dadaist artists in Berlin. At their first joint exhibition in August 1920, George Grosz and John Heartfield demonstrated their commitment with placards

18 Letter of Lajos Kassák to Tristan Tzara, Vienna, 16 December 1921. Published by Ferenc Csapiár, Kassák az európai avantgárd mozgalmakban, op. cit., 20.

19 Konstantin Umansky, Neue Kunstrichtungen in Rußland I., Der Tatlinismus oder die Machinenkunst [New directions of art in Russia I., Tatlinism or machine art], Der Ararat, 1/4., 1920,12-14. Konstantin Umansky, Neue Kunst in Rußland, 1914-1919 [New art in Russia, 1914-1919], Gustav Kiepenheuer, Potsdam, 1920.

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